


Maybe

by TheEntireFangirl



Category: Eleanor & Park - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 06:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13607043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEntireFangirl/pseuds/TheEntireFangirl
Summary: Park misses her. He misses everything about her. Her red hair and her brown eyes and her pale, freckled skin.Park misses her so much.Park misses her too much.Eleanor misses him. No stupid Asian kids go to her school now. No reminders of him that she wants.Just the looming memory of his fingers on her stomach.Just the looming packages put away safely in her closet.





	1. Park

**Author's Note:**

> So I just reread Fangirl which reminded me of a short fanfic I wrote a while ago after I finished Eleanor & Park (I published it on Wattpad) and I decided that I'm going to post it here.

Years later, Park still thought of Eleanor all the time. He had long gotten over her, but . . . 

She was his biggest maybe.

* * *

He knew where she lived. Eleanor's mom and her  _God forsaken_  stepdad were still living in the neighborhood, so maybe he could get Eleanor's uncle's phone number. He could still send letters, but it wouldn't help.

It would never help.

* * *

She gave him three words. Three words to help him remember her again and again until he could maybe, possibly, forget her for a brief period.

Those periods didn't come often. Their time together on the bus had ruined comic books for him, their time together talking about songs ruined music for him. Park couldn't even find  _new_ things, either. She had loved to read, so books couldn't keep him away from her red hair and freckled skin. TV . . . well, he couldn't sit anywhere in his living room without thinking about how, at one point in time, she had cuddled up to him while they sat there in that room.

 _Together_.

In a way, Park thought, they were always together. She was always on his mind, and he liked to think that he was always on hers. But then he remembered that they didn't even live in the same state, so they couldn't be together.

They were together separately.

* * *

Park sometimes drove by her house. The kids never came out to play, though years later, they must not have been as little as they used to. The oldest one, Ben, he had almost been Josh's age. When Josh grew to be thirteen, fourteen, older and older, taller and taller, Park realized that Ben wasn't going to go outside and play with trucks anymore. Or maybe he went to live with his dad.

Park hoped so. He had heard about Ben's dad, about Eleanor's dad, but he knew that whatever was wrong with him must have been better than fucking Richie.

* * *

Josh didn't really understand. He didn't understand what had happened, why Eleanor left, what was wrong with Richie. It wasn't his fault that no one said anything to him. But he still had less questions than Park.

* * *

When it came time for Park to pick a college, he almost applied to a few colleges in Minnesota, near where Eleanor lives.

Then he decided that he wouldn't have anything to say to her.  _"Hey, Eleanor. Remember how we used to go out and cuddle and kiss all the time until your jerk stepdad found out about us and kicked you out of the state? Good times."_

But then he would think about how sad that would make her, and Park secretly wished for it, because Eleanor was cute when she cried.

* * *

His family missed her, too. Even if they wouldn't admit it to themselves. For a while after Eleanor left, Josh would still make jokes about Eleanor. But then when Park would quietly dismiss himself from the room and neither of their parents would argue, Josh stopped.

Park's mom liked doing Eleanor's hair and makeup. It gave her something new and exciting. No one else in the neighborhood had curly red hair like Eleanor.

Park's dad wasn't angry at him for the eyeliner anymore. Not that Park felt the same way about it. It felt like something he  _should_  do, because he used to do it when Eleanor was still around. But he remembered the way Eleanor had reacted to it, and he wanted to cry until it came off.

Not that he hadn't done that before.

Park's dad sometimes started saying something then abruptly stopped his sentence. He still thought — no,  _knew_  — that talking about Eleanor would upset Park, even years later.

* * *

Park wanted Eleanor back. That was the purest truth there was: Eleanor had red hair like no one else. Freckles dotted her skin more than anyone else. Her skin felt cool against his own, unlike any other girl's. Despite the lack of heat, she was the most alive person he knew.

Eleanor had been Park's greatest  _Maybe._ Because, maybe someday, she would come back, or Park would visit her, or they would meet again in fifteen years celebrating the new millennia.

Park wished he could smell her perfume one last time. Or see her necklace. For God's sake, what he wouldn't do to see that necklace. The one real gift he had given to her.

Eleanor left Park with more questions than answers. She took more than she left. She made him cry, made him laugh, made him yell in frustration, and that was all after she left.

The craziest part about it was that Park would do it again if he could.


	2. Eleanor

Park was her greatest ____.

Maybe there's supposed to be a word there, but all words are applicable. Park was her greatest love, her greatest feat. Her greatest heartbreak. Her greatest joy and her greatest sadness.

Park was her greatest everything.

* * *

Eleanor didn't know what to do with the letters and the packages. She sent the postcard, and that had to be enough for both of them. Because she couldn't bear to write more.

She had her own box now. Not a grapefruit box, like before. No, she couldn't get another grapefruit box.

Even if she wanted one.

Eleanor had a brown box, from the mail. It had all of the unfinished letters, most of which she barely got through  _Dear Park,_  without throwing her pen because it was shaking too much or because she was crying.

Eleanor wanted to send him letters. About her aunt and uncle, about her new school and new friends. Yeah, she actually had friends. This wasn't like Omaha.

She just  _couldn't_.

* * *

Eleanor had counted the packages: forty-three letters. Ten boxes. A box arrived each year on Christmas, no matter what. Once, she poked a whole in the tape of a box, but got no where near sliding the scissors through it and opening it. She started crying and it felt like her throat was closing up before she could.

Park wasn't like anyone at her new school, though. No half-Korean kids. No one with vivid green eyes who said "Jesus-fuck" the first time they met. No one who kissed her like he did, who invited her to his house and had their mom do her hair. No one who wore "Kiss me, I'm Irish" T-shirts even though they looked too Korean to be Irish.

Eleanor knew this was going to happen, though she was still disappointed. Maybe at the kids. Maybe at herself. Maybe at Richie.

Fuck Richie.

* * *

Eleanor never went a day — wait, no, an  _hour_ — without thinking about him. He was still hugging her. Her nerve endings were still going crazy at his touch. There wouldn't be stopping that, she knew, for the rest of Eleanor's life.

* * *

Eleanor went to college and studied social working, a suggestion from her aunt. She was going to help her siblings even if God Himself came down and told her not to do it.

Eleanor was going to help Ben and Masie and Mouse and even Little Richie if that meant that he wouldn't end up like Big Richie. Eleanor swore it to herself.

The one person Eleanor couldn't help was herself. Because helping herself would mean going back to Omaha and seeing Park — something she  _couldn't_ do.

She just couldn't.

* * *

Park was Eleanor's greatest ____. He didn't need to have a word added there, because any and all words fit. Eleanor couldn't emphasize that enough.

Park was Eleanor's first kiss. He was her first real love. No, she never went to a dance with him. She never let Park's mom do her hair and makeup to match perfectly with her seafoam blue dress. She never fulfilled her promise to go to prom with him.

If it helped, she ended up not going to prom at all.

Park was everything to Eleanor. He was her air and her water, her food and her shelter. He was also her fire and her frostbite. Park was Eleanor's everything, Eleanor's greatest ____. He was her greatest enemy, her greatest loss. He was her greatest fear, too, when it came down to it. Not because she was scared of him, but because she was scared of everything else about him. Getting him back. Talking to him again.  _Never_ talking to him again. Losing him.

Not that she had him to lose.

Eleanor was the only person who really knew what he meant to her. Because he had taught her what it meant to love. She knew now that she had never truly felt love before Park. Not even in the obligatory way that Park's dad loved him.

Eleanor wished she could say that Richie had been the reason they broke up, but that wasn't it — not entirely. Eleanor never called him, never sent a letter back. For God's sake, she never even opened up his packages.

Eleanor had loved Park. Just not enough.

Not as much at he loved her.


End file.
